Monthly Archives: February 2019
There are moments, dark moments, moments of pain and hurt and aches and bruises. There are dark nights but they are part of the whole game. Without the dark night you cannot have a bright morning, and without the hurt, without the pain, you cannot enjoy either. They go together. Only dead people go beyond pain and then they go beyond pleasure too.
~Osho
This post was originally written and shared way back in December of 2007. I am revisiting it today because while some of the details have changed, the basics remain the same. And 12 years later, I don’t know that I am any closer to it now. Interesting to me how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Here’s the post:
Today, I actually took the time to write down what it is that I really do want. I expected the list would look a little bit different than it does. I fully expected my list would say that I want money, and I want to be healthy, and I want a Vardo Van, and I want my dog to live as long as I do, and I want to be enlightened, and I want everything to be OK. And while those things are certainly embedded, the list itself came out somewhat different, here it is:
FREEDOM: To be free financially, not tied down to a boring job; not worried about how all the bills will be paid; no debt hanging over my head; free to go where I want to go, to do what excites and interests me, to be free from the obligations and problems that deplete my energy and “bring me down.”
CONNECTION: deep real and intimate connection… to what? To the earth, to primal energy, to creativity, to love, to truth, to the tides, the seasons, the rhythm of nature, to magic, to… insight, intuition, the innermost resources of my own heart.
I really want to be wide open to life. Raw and real. Sharp and soft at the same time. Honest. Willing to walk through fear, to wade right into whatever presents itself. No more running, no more hiding, no more closing the windows and locking the doors.
And it occurred to me that the list is actually in a sort of reverse order. When I am wide open to life, willing to walk through fear and wade right into whatever presents itself, when I am done running, and hiding behind closed doors, that’s when I will begin to feel that deep and intimate connection to life itself… to magic, to the innermost resources of my heart. And when I accomplish that, I WILL be free.
So, there it is. Open Door Meditation, here I come!
When I was at Osho.com the other day, (actually this was back in 2007), I played his online Tarot, and pulled this card two times in a row, I decided that maybe I should take it seriously, so here is the commentary:
Life is rarely as serious as we believe it to be, and when we recognize this fact, it responds by giving us more and more opportunities to play.
The woman in this card is celebrating the joy of being alive, like a butterfly that has emerged from its chrysalis into the promise of the light. She reminds us of the time when we were children, discovering seashells on the beach or building castles in the sand without any concern that the waves might come and wash them away in the next moment. She knows that life is a game, and she’s playing the part of a clown right now with no sense of embarrassment or pretense.
When the Page of Fire enters your life, it is a sign that you are ready for the fresh and the new. Something wonderful is just on the horizon, and you have just the right quality of playful innocence and clarity to welcome it with open arms
He also said this:
The moment you start seeing life as non-serious, a playfulness, all the burden on your heart disappears. All the fear of death, of life, of love – everything disappears. One starts living with a very light weight or almost no weight. So weightless one becomes, one can fly in the open sky.
Zen’s greatest contribution is to give you an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world, the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man. Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children.
Here’s what Osho says in answer to that question:
Food is always a substitute for love. People who don’t love, who somehow miss a life of love, start eating more; it is a love-substitute.
When a child is born, his first love and his first food are the same thing — the mother. So there is a deep association between food and love; in fact food comes first and then love follows. First the child eats the mother, then by and by he becomes aware that the mother is not just food; she loves him too. But of course for that a certain Growth is necessary. The first day the child cannot understand love. He understands the language of food, the natural primitive language of all animals. The child is born with hunger; food is needed immediately. Love will not be needed until long after; it is not so much of an emergency. One can live without love one’s whole life, but one cannot live without food — that’s the trouble.
So the child becomes aware of the association of food and love. By and by he feels too, that whenever the mother is very loving, she gives her breast in a different way. When she is not loving, but angry, sad, she gives the breast very reluctantly, or does not give it at all. So the child becomes aware that whenever the mother is loving, whenever food is available, love is available. Whenever food is not available, the child feels love is not available, and vice versa. This is in the unconscious.
Somewhere you are missing a life of love so you eat more — that’s a substitute. You go on filling yourself with food and leave no space inside. So there is no question of love, because there is no space left. And with food things are simple because food is dead. You can go on eating as much as you want — food cannot say no. If you stop eating, the food cannot say that you are offending it. One remains a master with food.
But in love you are no longer the master. Another being enters into your life, a dependency enters into your life. You are no longer independent, and that’s the fear.
Ego wants to be independent and ego won’t allow you to love; it will only allow you to eat more. If you want to love then the ego has to be dropped.
It is not a question of food; food is simply symptomatic. So I will not say anything about food, about dieting or doing anything. Because that won’t help you, you won’t succeed. You can try a thousand and one ways; that won’t help. Rather, I will say forget about food, go on eating as much as you want.
Start a life of love, fall in love, find somebody who you can love, and immediately you will see you are not eating so much.
Have you watched? — if you are happy you don’t eat too much. If you are sad you eat too much. People think that when they are happy they eat too much, but that is absolute nonsense. A happy person feels so fulfilled that he feels no space inside. An unhappy man goes on throwing food into himself.
So I won’t touch on food at all…and you continue as you are, but find a lover.
Above All,
Don’t Wobble
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I think it's time to go shopping... maybe even buy some really cool stuff at my online shops!!
